The Importance of a Subject

I’m not a very complex person.

I typically find joy and solace in the simplicity of my circumstances. However, life is rarely that accommodating. And unfortunately, people are even less so. People have a unique way of mudding the waters of existence. When left to my own reflections things seem so simple. When things begin to get more complicated (which is inevitable anytime I leave the confines of my hermit shell) I find myself having to ask really thick questions for the sake of my simple mind. 

A great example is when people ask for feedback on anything in particular. The dangerous example is always the wife asking if something she donned for her occasion looks nice. There is no simplicity to be conjured up in that scenario. 

Other, and more frequent examples are at work. I am often requested to review a piece of content produced by my team. Let's say a colleague has created a video and is eliciting my feedback. I sit together with the individual and watch the video in its entirety. I then look at the eager inquirer directly in the eyes and ask in the most sincere way possible, “What was this video about?”

Now, you may be wondering if I was scrolling the vast black hole of social media instead of watching the video. You may even ask if I was conscious at all. The reality is that I was paying attention, possibly too much attention. You see, I have drawn a conclusion of what the video is about based solely on my first consumption of the material. My feedback, then, is based on what I believe to be the intent of the video based on my first impression.

So the question isn’t merely to point out the lack of clarity in the video content (though that does genuinely happen), but to ensure that the feedback is aligned with the original intent. If my first instinct is to want more explanation from specific points of the video, but the intent is a high-level overview, then I’ll toss that by the wayside. My feedback becomes, “Well done on being vague and leaving me begging for more information.” That is one way to keep someone engaged.

All that to say, I find myself asking a similar type of question every time I take a photo. It is a simple one, one that if someone asked me about one of my photos, I’d personally be mortified. A question important enough to write an entire post about all itself.

What is this a photo of?

That is likely not a grammatically correct question, at least in the formal. It’s not like I write as a means to an end. For fear of every word now being broken down with the expectation of a professional author, I regret ever having typed this out. 

Of what is this photo? To whom should the subject of the photo be accredited? What photo is of? In other words, what is the subject of the image?

What is a subject?

Given that this is a blog post about photography, it will be important for me to define what a subject is. In a photo, the subject is what the photo is primarily displaying. It is literally what the photo is being taken of. You took a photo of something, and that thing is the subject. Subjects are that thing that immediately catches your eye. It is the focal point. It is where most people will look first. In its very essence, it is what you want everyone to look at first. 

Pretty simple.

It is often surprising how often that is lost when I’m taking photos. As discussed in far too many words in an earlier post, I take photos when I see something of interest. Oh, pretty thing off to my right. I’ll grab my camera and try capturing it. But what is it? What was the thing that caught my attention?

More often than not what catches our attention is light. Light is a topic of its own, and once my procrastination is tethered to a hitching post and left to starve, I will publish an article about it soon. Light is what caught my eye, but what is the light doing? It often illuminates a subject. With that in mind, asking that overly simplistic question of what the subject is brings clarity to what you want to capture.

What should a subject be?

Your subject should be obvious, it should be in focus, and it had better be worth taking a photo of. Let us imagine going to the beach. There is sand, and it is coarse and rough and irritating and it does go everywhere young Anakin. However, along with the sand, there is water, quite a bit of it. With the water, there is a horizon that leads to the sky which, in Western NY, is darkened by gray clouds.

For the sake of the example, we will assume you aren’t living where it is cloudy 300 days out of a year, and there are pretty clouds. You sit in your beach chair carefully nested under a shade structure that mimics the marvels of modern engineering… Or a parachute. Either way, you sit and you say to yourself, “That is pretty, I need to get a photo of this.”

Photo taken. Now I ask the silly question regarding what it is you’ve taken a photo of. Well, it's a beach of course! Right, but what if the first thing that caught my eye was the clouds? I’d be hard-pressed to think that your subject was the clouds. It was almost as if all the elements of the photo created the subject. I’d more likely call that the context.

What is context?

Context to me speaks mainly to the elements of a photo that emphasize or generate the story of the subject.

Now let's say that your great Aunt Ruth was collecting seashells on that same beach. While she may not be as flattering in a swimsuit as she was back in the 70s, you find a certain nostalgia of seeing her pass the time away with the selectiveness of an abandoned crustation home. It reminds you of being a wee little child holding hands with her while she did this very activity decades ago. 

The beach, the water, and the clouds all become context. They are the backdrop to the main item focus, namely the subject. And with that in mind, you compose your shot to emphasize the subject within the context. The subject is now your great Aunt Ruth. The clouds and the irritating sand and endless oceans of water are now fulfilled in their purpose. The photo instantly has something that demands the viewer’s attention and also creates more personal interest.

This is all theoretical, of course. I’m not telling you every photo must have an obvious subject in order to be accepted as art. However, what I am saying is that knowing what you are taking a photo of causes you to be more intentional in how you take the photo. This, in my experience, has led to far better composed pictures. It also helps align the purpose of the photo with the output of the image. 

Try it out and let me know what you think!